Stop avoiding stress and start adding more if you want to thrive
You’ve heard over and over through the years that stress kills, so try to feel less of it.
Easier said than done, but what you probably haven’t been told by your doctors or your psychotherapist is that you need more of it.
Wait. What?
It’s true. You need stress. You need a lot of stress. You just need the right kinds.
The physical, mental, and emotional kind, and the more the better.
I know this idea goes against conventional wisdom, but it aligns perfectly with how your body, mind, and consciousness actually maintain function and become stronger.
It also aligns with evolution. Scientists have proven that genes often mutate as a response to environmental stress – not random luck – to adapt and survive.
Therefore, we started as microorganisms and are now humans (and still evolving) all because of stress.
Take away all the stress in your life, and you wouldn’t be around long.
Gap Insight: Stress a lump of coal a little and you still have a lump of coal. Place it under significant stress via high pressure and heat, and you have a diamond.
The Necessity of Stress
Muscles, joints, bones, the immune, pulmonary, cardiovascular, lymph, and digestive systems, memory, consciousness, and more all thrive under stress and they all weaken and die without it.
- After long stints in space, astronauts return to earth with weaker muscles, bones, and joints because they’ve lacked the stress of gravity to keep them strong.
Anyone who has ever had a cast on their arm or leg can also relate to this. After mere weeks of casting (inactivity), the muscles and bones noticeably shrink without the stress of muscle contraction and pressure on the bone.
- Our immune systems need viral, fungal, and bacterial challenge and stress to maintain its defenses and strength.
- Runners, cyclists, swimmers, and other endurance athletes experience higher VO2 max, cardiac and pulmonary efficiency, and tend to live longer than sedentary individuals all because of cardiovascular stress.
- Strength training increases muscle strength, size, and power output from stressful physical demand on the body.
- Memory games, puzzles, and daily mental challenges enhance memory and cognitive ability in all individuals.
The conclusion: When your mind and body are challenged and stressed daily, you maintain or grow. In the absence of stress and challenge, you weaken.
Gap Insight: We always hear about the detriments of high stress but we rarely hear the massive benefits. Too much of the wrong stress does kill, but so does too little.
Stress Brings Out the Miraculous in Us
Our bodies not only withstand, but thrive under tremendous amounts of physical, mental, and emotional stress. Consider the evidence:
- The thousands of endurance athletes who run hundred-mile races multiple times a year.
- Ironman athletes swim 2.4 miles followed by a 112-mile bike ride, followed by a full marathon of 26.2 miles – all within 8 to 12 hours.
- Wim Hof endured two hours in freezing cold water and ran a marathon shirtless in the Arctic.
- Dean Karnazes and others have run 50 marathons in 50 days.
- There are weightlifters capable of bench-pressing 700 lbs.
- Einstein, Hawking, Freud, Ben Franklin, and countless others have stressed their minds through study or meditation to produce incredible discoveries and insights that have changed the world.
- There are hundreds of polyglots in the world – people who speak more than 12 languages because they stressed their minds beyond the norm.
All these people aren’t just freaks of nature, they’re freaks of stress who have used it to their advantage in the form of repeated training to become stronger, smarter, or machines of endurance.
And I believe every human is capable of these things, though not every human will push themselves enough to experience them.
Not that you should, but you could. It’s in your DNA.
Gap Insight: If you want better health, stress your body more. If you want be smarter or more focused, stress your mind. If you want better leadership, put yourself under the microscope and add stress in the form of honest scrutiny.
How to Stress Yourself Out (In a Positive Way)
While you or I might not elect to swim in freezing water for two hours, or even attempt to lift 700 lbs for fear of literally breaking in half, there are some things you can do to increase your stress in very positive ways:
1. Stress your mind by:
Meditating or journaling for 10-30 minutes per day, learn to play a new song on the guitar, study calculus, take up a new language, write a non-fiction story, or learn any new skill.
Your brain will learn whatever you ask it to with enough repetition and focus (stress).
2. Stress your body by:
Walking 20 minutes a day more this week, trying a machine or an exercise in the gym you’ve never done before, jumping into a dance or yoga class this week, standing on one leg for up to sixty seconds once a day, jogging an extra ten minutes than usual.
Your body will adapt to ANYTHING you ask it to do – it may even run 50 marathons in 50 days – if you’re deliberate and smart enough with your training.
Just remember to always respect the fact that the body adapts with repeated stimulus over time. Too much too soon and you’ll feel the consequences in the form of pain or injury.
3. Stress your heart by:
Starting a gratitude meditation for 3 minutes a day, intentionally sitting with your anger, hurt, or worry and feel the emotion for a few minutes, connecting with someone you’re close to on a deeper level.
Your heart and emotions are your keys to vitality, connection, empathy, and the full enjoyment of all life has to offer. The more you stress it, the deeper your experience or connection.
Gap Insight: You really begin to thrive when the stress you’re adding becomes fun. Exercising, studying, learning, or challenging yourself in ways you enjoy will make stress feel more like a privilege than a chore.
Final Thoughts
If you want to grow anything in your life, including your muscles, endurance, connection, awareness, happiness, focus, concentration, or dancing skills, you need stress.
A little bit of stress maintains, a little more stimulates growth, and a lot of it stimulates a lot of growth. How much is too much? You’ll know.
What you won’t know is how much is too little until you’re already weaker, less focused, bored, disconnected from yourself or your loved ones, or feeling like a puddle of jello.
Don’t wait. Start stressing yourself out, and you might begin to agree that stress is exactly what your body, mind, and heart needs.
See you inside the gap.
I’m a keynote speaker, life counselor, and executive coach. If your organization or company is looking for a speaker for your next event, or if you’re working through a particular challenge and wish to work one-on-one with me, please reach out!
